English football fans making their way around the 12 World Cup host cities may have noticed an unfamiliar sight - locals arriving at the games by bicycle; young children cycling to school. Businessmen in suits flitting between meetings - on bikes. Elderly women doing their shopping - on two wheels.

Today, perhaps prompted by a massive increase in cycling in the capital - up 50% in five years - the government has announced an additional £15m for cycling provision, most of it to be spent on proficiency teaching for schoolkids, the rest going on better cycle lane access to schools.

The new transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, says he hopes it will reverse the "back of the car" generation.

There's a long way to go.

To put it in context, the city of Amsterdam alone will be spending 100m euros on cycling provision in the next five years.

Meanwhile in Britain, 70% of all car journeys are five miles or less - eminently cyclable - while only 1-2% of journeys in the UK are done by bike.

The government quietly dropped the original aspiration of it's 10-year transport plan to triple that by 2010.

More than a million kids are driven less than one mile to school, with one in 10 six-years-olds now obese. Meanwhile, the school run accounts for 20% of rush hour traffic.

So this could kill two or three birds with one stone. Unfortunately, the fear of one's child being killed is probably the major stumbling block .

If you want to start an argument among UK cycling bodies, ask them about segregated cycle lanes.

While those on the continent are wide, swept, used and respected - and frequently have their own controlled traffic light crossing - those in the UK tend to be narrow, incomplete, incomprehensible and full of sharp debris from motor vehicles.